In the hysteria that often surrounds the management of unstructured data, sometimes you’d get the idea that structured content was all safely under wraps. Anyone working with content will know that this is not so. Hence, the release by SDL today of its Product Content Maturity Model with upgrades to SDL Trisoft and SDL LiveContent to support it.

Technical Content in the Enterprise

The Product Content Maturity Model is just that; it’s a Model. But by the looks of things, it's a useful model in that it provides enterprises with ways to assess how and what content appears in product manuals and guides that can be fed to the wide organization.

The problem was this, SDL says; Enterprises have all this great content tucked away in technical manuals that their customer-facing workers can’t access directly and use in customer relationships.

That’s pretty bad -- the only thing worse is not to have content at all -- but even more problematic is that the customers, especially in technical areas that might be using the kind of technical manuals that SDL focuses on, are becoming increasingly demanding in the services they receive from companies.

The objective is to move traditional technical content to places where it will improve customer engagement in an interactive world.

Product Content Maturity Model

Both the framework and the upgrades target the growing SDL customer base that is looking to meet the demands of online viewers who expect to find specifically the relevant technical information they need on any device, whether they are about to buy a product or whether they need support for it.

SDL: Converging trends

To make that information available, it requires companies to share information across their content silos and create dynamically built documents that are up-to-date and ready for consumption.

Changing content model

SDL has developed the Product Content Maturity Model as a way to guide customers that are looking to reap the benefits of structured information.

Content silos get broken down within their enterprises and collaboration across the company takes place

Customer engagement with dynamic content drives down support costs

TriSoft, LiveContent

At the base of the model are the TriSoft and LiveContent releases. The TriSoft release extends the adoption in the enterprise by providing:

Integration between SDL Trisoft and SDL Xopus, SDL's XML Editor that enables wider collaboration in the review and writing of structure information

Load balancing that enables agile companies to send out their entire documentation on a daily basis

Industry standard single sign-on that enables the extension of content beyond just the technical writing departments

Bridge between SDL Trisoft to Adobe FrameMaker10

A new authoring bridge for advanced users that connects

For its part, the LiveContent release, which now appears in v5.1, is the element that aims to optimize customer engagement. It comes with:

Enhanced feedback loops between the customers and the writers who produce content

Easier filter of content by using the capabilities of new DITA 1.2

The Product Content Maturity Model has only just been released so it’s not really clear how it is going to work in a "live" situation. That said, there is no fault with the logic of it, or the need for it, and it’s bound to be popular with companies that are looking to improve customer engagement.

If you want to find out more, you can check out the video below, or visit the SDL pages on it.